


break from no-one

by softlyblue



Series: requests <3 [6]
Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Day At The Beach, Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M, doodle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 01:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18790024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyblue/pseuds/softlyblue
Summary: Dowoon knows every inch of Younghyun's schedule the same way Younghyun knows every second of his. They’ve grown that way, entangled.





	break from no-one

**Author's Note:**

> this is a commission for my dear friend @bluchilipepper on twitter !! <3 hope you enjoy

When he wakes up, there’s frost creeping over the windowpanes of his room, thin fingertips brushed there during the night. His alarm keeps buzzing at his desk, but Dowoon is too cosy in bed to get up and turn it off. His flatmates can just deal with the noise - it’s late enough in the day that they can’t  _ really  _ do anything. 

(He can feel it already, how late he’s going to be for class, as per usual for most of the people in his Tuesday morning seminar. Nobody wants to be there when bed is an option.) 

Tuesday is the worst day in the week, if you ask Dowoon’s opinion, and January is the worst time of the year. Tuesday isn’t half close to the weekend, depressingly mired in the week, and the winter’s wrapped a long, tight hug around the whole place, with no sign of ever letting go. he can’t face the seminar. 

The bang on the thin wall separating him from his flatmate signals the end of his contemplation. “Oi! Dowoon! Turn that fucking sound off, some of us had the night shift!”

“Sorry!” Dowoon yells, and swings his bare legs out of bed, wincing at the cold air. He fumbles for his phone, and finally the irritating noise shuts off. 

Already, he can feel that the day isn’t going to turn out how he wants it to. He’s cold, his phone tells him he’ll be late for class unless he goes  _ now,  _ he’s got twenty-one unopened texts and messages from people he doesn’t want to talk to, and one of the girls in the music society has called him three times since last night. Great. Another person to let down lightly, because for  _ some reason  _ \- 

His phone starts buzzing in his hand, and Dowoon is so startled he drops it. “Fuck!”

_ Caller ID: Bri-Bri  _

Why is Younghyun calling him? Dowoon stares down at his phone on the floor, paralysed for a second, seeing the picture Younghyun’s saved as on his phone; a little bit drunk, the lip of a bottle of cider pressed to his mouth, his eyes sparkling as he looks right into Dowoon’s lens. A rare shine of the Younghyun he is when he thinks nobody’s looking - a photo Dowoon treasures more than he wants to let on. 

Pick up your phone, dumbass. Dowoon flicks the little green icon into the centre of the screen, and presses his phone to his shoulder. “Hey,” he says, imagining he’s coming off suave and cool and not at all lovestruck, “What’s up? Why the early call?”

_ "Dowoonie,"  _ Younghyun's soft, accented voice floats through the speaker, pressed against Dowoon's ear.  _ "Do I need an excuse to call?" _

"No," Dowoon lets himself smile softly, amusement colouring his voice, "But not usually at… half seven in the morning."

_ "Mm. True."  _

Dowoon closes his eyes, pressing the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he wriggles into the pair of jeans slung over his desk chair from yesterday. Younghyun breathes out a chuckle into his ear, and starts to say something else; as usual, all Dowoon has to do is wait.

_ "You've got that music seminar this morning,"  _ he says. Not a question - Dowoon knows every inch of Younghyun's schedule the same way Younghyun knows every second of his. They’ve grown that way, entangled. 

“Yeah, and what about it?”

_ “I’ve got a group meeting,”  _ Younghyun says; in the background, Dowoon can hear traffic. So he’s driving, then.  _ “I told them I was too sick to come in.”  _

“You’re not sick,” Dowoon says unnecessarily, feeling a little dumb. What isn’t he getting? “Are you?”

Younghyun laughs again. Dowoon can see him smiling, the way his eyes light up, the slender taper of his brows into his nose into his pink lips. Sometimes, on an impulse, he’ll grab Dowoon’s cheeks in his thin palms and plant a soft kiss there, when he’s in a giddy mood like the one he seems to be in now.  _ “I’m not sick, Dowoonie. But I don’t want to go to class, do you? Are you up? Are you dressed?” _

Dowoon puts the phone on speaker so he can wrestle himself into a shirt. “Yeah,” he says, only slightly muffled. “Uh… yeah, yeah I am.”

_ “I’ll be outside in five minutes, okay? Bring some coffee. See you.”  _

Younghyun hangs up, but waits until he hears Dowoon sigh a laugh before he does. His blinking face, the drunk picture of him, lingers on the phone screen long after the connection’s gone. 

And Dowoon looks up to see his face smiling back at him in the cracked mirror, and tells himself that they’re being slow, they’re being sensible, Younghyun’s babying of him and his laugh and his smile and his gentle way of handling Dowoon is  _ sensible,  _ but the flickers still start in his heart, and the smile won’t ever fade in the mirror when he thinks of him. He has other friends, of course, Wonpil won’t ever leave his side, and there’s the girls from his class he’s friends with despite their obsessiveness, but Younghyun - and Brian and YoungK and whatever else he’s decided to call himself this week - will always be who he falls back on. 

He stops smiling at himself like an idiot when he realises Younghyun will be here in two minutes, and he still hasn’t brushed his teeth.  

 

When Younghyun pulls up, Dowoon is bouncing outside the front door of his building with a flask of freshly-brewed coffee and a bright, beaming smile. He doesn’t care how stupid he looks, a scarf tucked around his chin and over his cheeks, and if more people were watching he’d probably have the grace to flush red, but it’s still early morning. The only person watching is Younghyun. 

“Good morning,” he says, smiling. Younghyun smiles like nobody else - sure, Dowoon can search through his friends, Jae’s bright beam full of teeth and happiness, Wonpil’s little half-lip smile, his eyes all scrunched up, Sungjin’s hefty thigh-slapping laugh, but none of them come close to how Younghyun’s smile makes him feel. Younghyun smiles like he’s forgotten to stop, his bottom lip hanging open, glossy from balm and his mouth, his teeth poking out from underneath the slim line of his top lip. His small nose - everything about him, really - puts Dowoon in mind of a curious fox, vulpine curves, the way his hair falls over his eyes, the way his cheeks rise. Maybe Dowoon’s fallen a bit too deep. 

(No chance.) 

“Good morning,” he says, instead of any of that. “What’s all this about, then?”

“Get in the car and I’ll tell you,” Younghyun smiles. 

Dowoon, as usual, is powerless to resist. 

When he gets into the car and Younghyun pulls away from the front of the grim student block Dowoon’s living in this year, he’s pleased to discover a hot brown paper bag in the footwell. It smells of fries and chicken. “Do my eyes deceive me?”

Younghyun laughs. It sounds pretty. “You can eat it on the condition that you feed me chips every so often, you monster. I’m taking you out for the day. My treat.”

“And the coffee?”

“To keep us warm when we get there.”

The city traffic isn’t as bad as it could be, this time in the morning; everyone’s either at work, in class, or still in bed, and Younghyun quickly worms out of the inner-city until he’s racing down the long stretches of road, just the two of them, some cooling fries, and some shite on the mid-morning radio in between two hosts trying to sell a car competition. Occasionally, Younghyun will nudge Dowoon’s arm, his hand still resting on the gearstick, and then Dowoon will fish a fry from the bag and feed it to Younghyun, who laughs through the food every time it happens. It fills Dowoon with a sort of warm, disbelieving glee. 

“Where  _ are  _ we going?”

“On a break,” Younghyun’s long diverted them off the main roads, and Dowoon’s got a sneaking suspicion he knows where the car is pointed. “I don’t want to go to class and neither do you.” His hand slides off the gearstick and pats Dowoon’s, resting on the seat; he leaves it there for a few seconds, enough to warm him up, before going back. “Sound okay?”

“Mm,” Dowoon sees a signpost, and now he’s sure. 

Younghyun can be full of a right cheeky spontaneity, when the mood takes him. 

The ocean is revealed in bits, and Dowoon always realises he’s close when he looks ahead and sees no mountains, no cities on the horizon, no horizon to speak of beyond the curve of the road in front of them. Hills off to either side, fields full of grazing livestock, a few early spring lambs jumping merrily up and down like they aren’t on the brink of freezing over. Younghyun reaches out and turns the radio off, but Dowoon hardly notices, his nose pressed to the glass of the passenger window. He doesn’t care how childish it is. He  _ loves  _ knowing that soon, sooner than soon, he’s going to be seeing the sea; the anticipation is almost better than the sight of it, the empty space in front of him just waiting to be filled with something. Potential. 

Potential for something beautiful. 

(Another touch at his knuckles.) 

“We’re here,” Younghyun says quietly, pulling into one of the roadside car parks. “There’s a five minute walk, but then it’s beach. This okay?”

Dowoon turns the full force of his smile on him, and Younghyun beams back. “Thank you for thinking of me,” he says, instead of anything else he could say.  _ Let me kiss you.  _

“I wouldn’t have thought of anyone else,” Younghyun looks softly at him for one more second, and then there’s the noise of his car door opening. “C’mon, let’s see how cold the wind really is.” 

The wind turns out to be  _ incredibly  _ cold. 

Looking back on it, Dowoon isn’t really sure what either of them expected, in the middle of January on a trip taken completely on a whim. He certainly isn’t dressed for the weather, with only a scarf to fight against it, and the wind whistles through the holes in his jeans, making him shudder. Younghyun’s dressed a little better, with a scarf and a hat he pulls from the pocket of his padded jacket, but both of them feel the cold. Definitely do. 

“You got the coffee?” Younghyun asks, his eyes crinkling like he knows how uncomfortable Dowoon is. “All part of the experience, Dowoonie.”

Dowoon makes a face at him, but waves the flask in the air. “Got the coffee.”

“Good.” Like it means nothing to him, Younghyun reaches over for the hand that isn’t holding the flask of coffee, and clasps it in his own. The five points where his fingertips touch Dowoon’s skin feel on fire, warmer than any of the rest of him, and when Younghyun’s palm fits into his it slots there like it knows that’s where it belongs. Younghyun smiles at him. “Let’s go see the sea, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dowoon whispers. His voice is hoarse and his lips are cracking. 

Ever since he was small, Dowoon’s always liked to walk along the beach, to see the sea stretch out in front of him, as endless and uninterrupted as the sky. If he really tries he can see the world curving away from itself, everything happening gently and slowly, but happening with the sure faith that it’s been happening for millenia and won’t stop just because some boy is standing on the beach. He likes that. He likes knowing that something is happening, something much bigger than him. 

It feels good. 

Today, predictably, there’s nobody around. Why would there be? Who else would go to the beach on a day so cold you can see your own breath huffed out in front of you? Twin fumes, like curling dragons, pour from their mouths, and Dowoon wonders when they’ll drink the coffee. Wonders why Younghyun’s driven all this way. 

“It feels so weird, without people,” Younghyun says quietly, “Don’t you think? I like it. Feels like I could do anything.”

“Yeah,” Dowoon says, wishing he had something more eloquent to say - something to show Younghyun that he  _ is  _ listening, that he  _ does  _ agree. 

They walk a little out onto the beach, the sand hard and cold beneath their feet, clinging to itself with the stickiness of seawater and last night’s frosty rainstorm. Dowoon keeps dragging the toes of his high-top sneakers in the sand, and then looking back to see the marks he’s made, like some bizarre animal. He wonders if someone will come along and for a brief second, in the fog of early morning, mistake the marks for a dragon. A sea monster. A turtle. A - 

“I think I saw a baby fish,” Younghyun says, staring at his feet, where a puddle of seawater sinks back into the sand. “Y’know, the ones that hide? I swear I saw one.”

Dowoon hands him the flask and, regretfully, disentangles their fingertips so he can crouch down and poke the sand. “The little black ones?”

“Yeah,” Younghyun crouches beside him. Dowoon can smell him; coffee, a little musky perfume, and a smell so completely Younghyun’s that he isn’t sure he’ll ever find out where it comes from. “I love little fish.”

The pair of them prod their fingertips into the sand. Dowoon feels curiously impish, and totally out of time, like Younghyun’s lifted him bodily from normal life and taken him to some alternate reality where anything could happen. 

_ Feels like I could do anything.  _

Anything, indeed. 

When Dowoon looks up from the mess of sand they’ve created, it’s to find Younghyun already staring at him, his mouth lack of a smile and his soft eyes as bright as ever, sparkling white, telling each other some joke that Dowoon isn’t privy to. He feels exposed, too much so, and he can’t take the look for more than a few moments before he ducks his head down again, back to the sand. Back to safety. “What?”

“Nothing,” Younghyun says. Murmurs, really, like he doesn’t want the words to escape. 

For another moment, Dowoon pokes at the sand, and then Younghyun’s fingers trace over his knuckles and he flips his hand around, grabs Younghyun’s and slides their fingers together. Knotted. A sailor’s knot never comes undone, isn’t that what they say? 

“Come on with me and let’s go in the sea, yeah?” 

“Oh,” Dowoon looks up and Younghyun’s pulling, gently, his thumb rubbing across the place on Dowoon’s knuckle where he hit himself with a drumstick, the last time the five of them were together and jamming. “Coffee?”

Younghyun laughs and sits back down; neither of them want to care about the clinging sand that’ll be sticking to the seats of their jeans, so they’re acting like it won’t happen. “Yeah, before we both freeze to death. Good idea.”

Dowoon’s fingers are a little too cold to properly screw open the top of the flask, but all the same, he wouldn’t swap where he is right now for anywhere else in the world. Sitting on an abandoned beach with Younghyun, the prettiest man in the world, the sea blowing a soft breeze across them, salt in the air and water dancing in the waves? It feels like one of those perfect moments. Dangling, balancing in the air. 

“You take care of me, Dowoonie,” Younghyun pokes him in the side. “Have the first cup, you’re far colder than me.”

Dowoon would protest, but Younghyun is older than him after all, and he doesn’t chill so easy. How many times have they been out and about, the rest all bundled up and Younghyun in little more than a t-shirt? “Thanks, hyung,” he says instead. Younghyun pours coffee into the top of the flask and wraps Dowoon’s fingers around it, as careful and delicate as a master handling a prized project. 

Being  _ taken care of.  _ Now Dowoon is sure his ears will be pink and red. He takes a sip so that if Younghyun calls him out on it, he can’t reply. 

“Dowoonie,” Younghyun begins, leaning back and facing the sea, “It feels like the perfect day. Doesn’t it?”

The sky is worryingly overcast. The wind is biting. The beach is abandoned. The sand is damp. 

“It does,” Dowoon agrees, and passes the half-drunk cup across to Younghyun. He feels warm from the inside out, and he knows the hot drink is only partly to blame; the most of it can be attributed to the smile of the man beside him, pressing the thermos to his cheeks. “It really does. Just the… perfect day.”

“It feels like we could do anything.  _ Be  _ anything. Right?”

Dowoon looks around him, at the complete lack of other people. Sand dunes whip and whirl, thin, bitter grass waving at him, and he fights the urge to wave back. “Right.”

Younghyun’s free hand covers his on the sand. “I thought we both needed a day out,” he says. “To… y’know. Remember what it’s like, not having to be anywhere or do anything. Just for a bit.”

And he  _ is  _ right, because it  _ is  _ nice to sit on the sand and to know there’s nothing else to do but exist. Even in the cold. 

“I’m glad you brought me,” Dowoon says. He is; fervently so. 

“I wouldn’t have dreamed of bringing anyone else,” Younghyun says, like it's an affront just to think about it. “You were the first person I thought of, Dowoonie.”

“Mm. Thank you.”

“Dowoon.”

It’s the use of his name in full, not the call of it in general, that startles Dowoon enough that he turns around to face the other man, a little surprised at the seriousness. “Uh - yeah?”

Younghyun is a very  _ pretty  _ man. Of course Dowoon’s thought it before, thinks it regularly even, but it’s the truth plain and simple - he’s pretty. Handsome, but his facial features are so delicate, so otherworldly, that at any moment Dowoon’s half-afraid Younghyun will tell him he has to go now, and step back into the strange fairyland he’s come from. It’s the only thing he could be. He’s a pretty man, and Dowoon’s been like this with him for long enough to know that when he looks like this - his lips parted, his eyes staring ever so slightly down - he’s about to kiss him. 

Dowoon melts into it, when he does.

Younghyun tastes of chewing gum and coffee, his mouth soft against Dowoon’s. His hand still covers Dowoon’s on the sand, his thumb brushing over a knuckle, and the kiss is soft and sweet and over in both an instant and a million years. Dowoon feels dazed; knocked out of circulation. 

When Younghyun pulls away, he looks at Dowoon with something Dowoon doesn’t know how to parse. Some emotion in his eyes. 

And then the moment is over, but in a way, still continuing. “Come on,” Younghyun says. “Lets see how cold the sea is.” 

And when they do, they’re still holding hands, thumbs against knuckles. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! if you want to contact me my twitter is @sweetlyblue - or if you aren't around there, my email is softlyblues@gmail.com <3


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